Isee the same cycle in so many places. What cycle? A five-step process for ensuring that ideas fail.

Step 1: Altruistic leaders encourage suggestions and ask associates for their continuous improvement ideas in an attempt to foment some daily kaizen.
Step 2: Associates (not all of them), somewhat skeptically, call leadership’s bluff and submit their ideas.
Step 3: Leaders are pleased with the response (the number of ideas, that is) and then… panic. Leaders determine that the quality of the ideas is uneven at best, and they can’t effectively respond to and implement even a fraction of the ideas that have been submitted.
Step 4: Associates come to the realization that their ideas are on a one-way trip to kaizen’s version of the Roach Motel. You know, the Roach Motel, where ideas check in, but they don’t check out. The most jaded associates chide the ones who were gullible enough to think that their ideas mattered. Improvement idea submissions slow to a trickle.
Step 5: Leadership organizes a tiger team to make a dent in the huge inventory of ideas.

And so on. I don’t need to tell you that this cycle doesn’t always end well.

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